custody in a post-9/11 environment, the state department has characterized the same treatment as torture, abuse or cruel treatment when those techniques were applied by foreign governments. the cia recognized this in an internal review and acknowledged that many of the interrogation techniques it employed were inconsistent with the public policy positions the united states has taken regarding human rights. the united states is understandably subject to criticism when it criticizes another nation for engaging in torture and then justifies the same conduct under national security arguments. there are those that defend the techniques like waterboarding, stress positions and sleep deprivation because there was the office of legal counsel which issued a decision approving of their use because they defined them as not being torture. those opinions have since been repudiated by legal experts and the olc itself. and even in its opinion it relied not only on a very narrow legal definition of torture, but also on factual representations about how the techniques would be implemented that later prov